This book has two main goals.
First, this is a book about Inkscape, a powerful open source SVG-based vector graphics editor. It describes the stable version 0.47 (released in summer 2009) in great detail, covering all of its features (excluding only a few that are clearly experimental or incomplete).
The second, perhaps more ambitious goal of this book is to evangelize the vector way of creating graphics and share the joy of thinking in vector. Once the exclusive domain of professional designers, in the recent years vector graphics software has grown much more visible and accessible. A vector editor is not yet a standard accessory of a computer in the same way a bitmap editor like Photoshop is, but it’s getting there—and Inkscape has been a major part of this “vector revolution.”
Much of Inkscape’s appeal lies in its being the only professional-level vector editor which is fully open source and cross-platform. There’s more to it than that, however. Simple and accessible at the basic level, Inkscape is also extremely powerful if you dig deeper; it is vast and inexhaustibly hackable—from customizable keyboard shortcuts (Appendix D) and a command-line language (Appendix C), to powerful chainable path effects (Chapter 13), to arbitrarily complex vector filters that push the envelope of vector graphics (Chapter 17). This book swims the Inkscape ocean from shore to shore without leaving any island unvisited.